Archives for April 2013

One Arm Bridge, Twists and the Valdez

April 30, 2013 By Logan Christopher 8 Comments

In my previous article I covered some advanced versions of the wrestler’s bridge exercise to build both more neck and spine strength, as well as dynamic flexibility.

Now its time to turn on the gymnastic bridge.

By itself the bridge requires a high degree of flexibility. The truth is when your flexibility is great, then holding the position isn’t too hard. It requires more strength when you don’t have the flexibility to do it, because you can’t quite get to lock out.

If you’re not there yet, keep at it. Make sure to read Convict Conditioning to build your bridge.

And what I want to cover here is an advanced variation not covered in that book, that takes your flexibility, and stability, to another level. Here is a short series of progressions you can do. The video shows each one and you can read more about them below.

One Arm Bridge Hold

Get into a gymnast bridge and lockout your arms. Shift your weight slightly to one side then raise up the other arm off the ground. Hold for time. If you can get a minute you’re doing great.

Work both sides equally. You can come down and rest between sets or shift back to two hands, then onto the other arm.

One Arm Bridge Twist

There are several versions of this move that just change it up slightly.

To start with get into you’re your one arm bridge. Rotate your torso towards that arm as you kick your opposite side leg over until you come to a position where you’re on all fours.

Note that your hand may need to twist on the ground as you turn.

After you get to all fours you can then rotate back.

Work to both sides. You’ll likely find one side is better than another. This is usually more because of flexibility than strength. Also notice that it requires an even greater degree of shoulder and wrist flexibility plus shoulder stability through an interesting plane of motion.

One Arm Bridge Twist from Sitting

Now we’re going to do the same thing starting from a sitting position. For description purposes I’ll describe this from the position of having the left hand on the ground.

Start with your left hand on the ground, pointing away from your body. Your left leg will be straight and your right leg bent and close to your body. Raise your hips up and onto that arm as you bridge over. Your hand has to do a 180 as you come into a bridge position. Once in position you can place your right hand on the ground.

Try coming up with the same or opposite arm back to a sitting position.

Valdez

This is a move from gymnastics that is usually reserved for women as they tend to have more flexibility. Still it can be worked up to, if you’re willing to put in the time.

This combines the previous exercise, the one arm bridge twist from sitting, with a kick over done in seamless fashion. In the beginning you may need to break it down into sequential steps and of course both should be solid before attempting to put them together. You actually begin kicking up with the leg even before your second arm touches the ground.

I’ve pulled this one off before, but not in many years. Without working on it recently, I haven’t quite got the flexibility and control required for it.

So if you’re ready for some more intense bridge work start working in this series. If you can do all this, just holding a bridge will never be a problem again.

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About Logan Christopher: Logan Christopher has been called a physical culture renaissance man as he is accomplished in a wide range of strength skills from kettlebell juggling, performing strongman stunts, and bodyweight exercises. He is the author of numerous books including Secrets of the Handstand and The Master Keys to Strength & Fitness. In addition, he’s spent the last several years going deep into mental training to find out what it takes to really excel and tactics that can help people instantly improve their exercises. You can find out more about all this at www.LegendaryStrength.com.

Reaping the Rewards of Patient Practice—Steady Progress and Injury Prevention

April 23, 2013 By Adrienne Harvey 21 Comments

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While many people have broken free of the “more is always better” idea in their bodyweight or calisthenics training, it still seems like there’s a tendency towards endless reps when it isn’t always necessary. That’s something I love about the approach to bodyweight training in Convict Conditioning, especially in the advanced progressions. I’m in maintenance mode right now (not trying to make significant changes in body composition), and am still able to acquire a lot of skill and strength with surprisingly low reps of near maximal-effort bodyweight and kettlebell drills.

Most of the time, there’s an element of spontaneity with my workouts—adapting them to the energy of the day, and making the most of it, even if that means it’s time to take a break. Also, I’ll use the time after a few days of rest to test my progress on a given move, or to establish a baseline for something I want to continue to learn. These “workouts” are often more like play. Primal Move has been a big influence on my programming—or lack thereof. My goals any more seem to be focused on the strict execution of certain moves or lifts—to the point that being able to do them on any given day in a variety of circumstances. I want to do incredible things and make it look easy, and that will only comes with patient practice.

At around 14 or 15 years old, I was in band class and remember seeing some of my good friends first learning to play the trumpet. They were trying their best, but they were making some terrible sounds. That same year, my family and I went to New Orleans and I saw a street jazz musician playing a trumpet with such ease that the trumpet might as well have been an extension of himself. He seemed to make the trumpet express whatever he wanted, however he wanted. Meanwhile back at home, my friends clumsily continued to mash what they hoped were the right combination of keys while struggling to maintain their breathing and embrasure.

Every move my friends were making was a conscious effort in this early part of their learning and obviously, a lot more practice was in order. The practiced ease and confidence of a professional musician, acrobat, or other performer is something that I greatly admire. The accomplished street performer who consistently delivers amid constantly changing and chaotic conditions demands equal admiration.

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The three stages of motor learning—cognitive, associative, and autonomous certainly apply to our training. In the cognitive stage every part of the movement or skill someone is learning is very conscious, right foot here, left foot there, etc. Sometimes people go through a mental checklist in this stage, every (remembered) detail is a conscious effort. In bodyweight exercise, during the cognitive stage we are also beginning to gain the necessary strength, along with figuring out where all our “parts” need to go! The first few times I tried to do a clutch flag I had to check and make sure my hands were facing the right directions on the pole, really think about which parts were on which side, what was stacked, where was the weight going, what needed to be tensed to the max. Now I can walk up to an appropriate parking pole and casually just pop up into a clutch flag because I’m well past the cognitive stage. Now that I’m learning the press flag, or “human flag,” I’m having to once again learn which hand goes where on the pole, where I’m facing… The process has started all over again—and that’s before getting to the strength components. (By the way the progressions for the clutch flag and press flag in Convict Conditioning 2 are just fantastic.) From the previous paragraph, my teenage friends were still in the cognitive stage, and the jazz musician in New Orleans was fully autonomous.

Generally speaking, when our form on a move gets sloppy, we are not learning, and our body and minds are in a self-protective mode. In most cases, this will lead to decreased performance with a greater risk of injury. Its so important especially with bodyweight exercise to remember that some of the moves can be near-maximal exercises. Without a barbell loaded up and bending in the middle, or a giant kettlebell to remind us, it can be easy to forget that we’re near our max—for muscles and the central nervous system. Keeping reps low, and staying fresh by taking necessary breaks (or supersetting non-related exercises) has been absolutely central to my own success. Just doing a few near maximal lifts or intense short sets throughout the day can be amazingly effective. It’s like making a small deposit in a savings account, which over time—and often more quickly than expected—really starts to add up. It helps to be dedicated, and it really helps to be a little stubborn!

Something I’ve been asked a number of times by people interested in bodyweight training is, “What do you do about injuries?” It sounds like a smart aleck answer, so I always try to phrase it politely, but what I really want to say in those situations is, “I just try not to have them in the first place, by stopping before it gets ugly.”

As a general rule, if I finally accomplish a goal exercise (a dead hang bar muscle-up is a good example), depending on how it felt, I might just stop right there and take a break. Regardless of where you are in terms of strength or skill, pushing a maximal move to exhaustion usually leads to some unpleasant consequences. I don’t want a potential injury or the lost training time that comes with it. An extra rep or two isn’t worth the risk. Besides, with a lifestyle which includes leading workshops, local classes, plus my own training, I simply can’t afford to take injury risks. Pretty sure your lifestyle doesn’t have room for needless injury either. I think, part of the learning curve with skillful exercise involves learning your own limits, and safely expanding those limits over time.

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About Adrienne Harvey, RKCII, CK-FMS, Primal Move Nat’l Instructor: I started studying kettlebell training over three years ago and became RKC Certified in October of 2010, and became an RKC Level 2 Instructor in July 10th of 2011. Kettlebell and bodyweight training have been absolutely crucial in my personal quest for fitness, and I love sharing these ultra-effective modalities with small groups and individuals. Similarly, developing recipes to further support performance, body composition, and general enjoyment is another passion. Go to http://www.giryagirl.com/ for more information about Adrienne!

The L-hold Tutorial

April 16, 2013 By Aleks Salkin 15 Comments

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The L-hold (also known as the L-sit) is one of the 7 static holds included in the PCC syllabus. Like all statics, L-holds are phenomenal for tendon strength and powerful, total-body co-ordination—but don’t expect to see them performed in gyms around America anytime soon.

My own recent exploration of the L-hold started off somewhat embarrassingly – with a locked-up lower back. After botching my first dance with heavy pullovers, my lower back felt like a piece of wood – stiff and immovable (note to interested parties: common sense would dictate not to arch your back while doing pullovers. My common sense was evidently on a smoke break at the time. Don’t arch your back if you do them). I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do pistols, I couldn’t do L-holds, I couldn’t even hinge at the hips without feeling like I was going to catapult face first into the ground.

I was in trouble with a capital “TROUB”.

Fortunately, I had a hunch that there was a simple solution to this sudden bout of inflexibility, and the answer lie in strengthening my low back’s next door neighbor: my abs.

I chose the L-hold because hanging leg raise variations were unbearable at the time, and because of the high promises made about L-holds in Convict Conditioning 2: “Cure bad hips and low back inside and out.” Could it really be that simple? Would the L-hold break its promise when I most needed it to deliver? There was only one way to find out, and fortunately the progression sequence Paul Wade laid out in Convict Conditioning 2 was just what the doctor ordered. I started with bent leg holds and found that pumping my legs between progressions increased the difficulty and skyrocketed my strength and blood flow to my low back all at the same time. To make a long story short, within a few short days my back was as good as new. In this post, I’m going show you how I approached mastery of the L-hold.

First and foremost, you are going to need two things: strength in the form of strong shoulders, lats, triceps, and (of course) abs. Be sure you’ve cut your teeth on dips, one-arm pushups and their progressions, handstands, pull-ups, and leg raises before you tackle this move. Second, you are going to need some good active flexibility, or as Coach Wade refers to it in CC2 “Tension flexibility”, in your hips and legs. Whereas passive flexibility is essentially yielding to the force of gravity to improve your range of motion, active flexibility uses muscle tension to kick gravity to the curb and move in an advanced range of motion against the Earth’s otherwise unforgiving pull.

L-hold domination

To begin with, start on some sort of raised surface rather than on the floor: paralettes, kettlebell handles (careful!), or a sturdy desk will do the trick. For the sake of variety, consider practicing them on all these surfaces. While I have no hard proof of it, getting good at a this or any skill in a variety of contexts may very well make you better at the movement overall.

To keep your shoulders happy, keep them pushed down as far away from the ears as possible, and keep your “elbow pits” forward for all the steps in each series. Let your shoulders round forward – flare your shoulder blades – and hold that position tight. Keep your gaze straight ahead.

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Nope! Chest is too wide and back is arched. You may not pass go.

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Bingo! Back is flexed, chest is sunken, abs are tight. You have redeemed yourself.

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Make your elbow pit point the same direction as your fingers.

Your goal is to work up to 20 second holds on each progression before moving on. However, because you’ll achieve that goal by getting stronger before focusing on endurance, I’ll give you a tool to get a taste of the next progression in the series to help build your strength faster and work your way toward the advanced L-hold more time efficiently. Not only will you be building static strength, but you will also be building dynamic strength, thereby giving you some built-in variety and the ability to feel out the movement a bit better.

When your arms start shaking and you are making ugly faces and grunting to get through your sets, you’ve already gone too far. If you’re working yourself into the ground you’re building fatigue, not strength. Knock it off.

You’re going to start with the bent leg hold. Prop yourself up on your raised surface, bend your legs to about 90 degrees, and…well, hold it. Hold it for as long as you (semi) comfortably can, take a break, and repeat.

Your journey through the progressions will go in this order.

1) Bent leg holds

–>Bent leg-to-straight leg

2) Straight leg holds

–> straight leg-to-N-holds

3) N-holds

–> N-holds-to-L-hold

4) L-hold

And if you want to take the first small step toward V-holds, you can add in this gem

==> L-hold-to-advanced L-hold

5) Advanced L-hold

Check out the video for the deeper details to kicking gravity in the face L-hold style. Note that during the dynamic variations I’m controlling my leg movement, not letting it control me (i.e. bouncing around and losing balance). Don’t move on until you can do the same.

Programming will be different from person to person. If you’re a rank beginner, you can get by initially with just two days a week of work. I say “initially” because the L-hold is not as taxing as movements such as hanging leg raises and Dragon Flags, so practicing them daily should become your goal.

The following programs are examples. You may progress faster, you may progress slower. Use these programs as templates, not gospel, and you will find that you have a solid base to work from and progress should roll in faster than you can spell “transverse abdominis.”

Beginner program:

Week 1: Don’t overthink it – keep your effort level at around 50%-80%. No need to go balls-to-the-wall just yet.

Monday: Bent leg holds

Thursday: Bent leg holds to straight leg holds

Week 2:

Monday: sets of bent leg holds and bent leg-to-straight leg holds

Thursday: Straight leg holds

After this, three days a week should be no problem. If that’s still overdoing it, stick with two days a week and progress as slowly as you need to. You don’t get a medal for racing through the progressions.

Intermediate program:

Week 1:

Monday: straight leg holds + bent leg-to-straight leg holds

Wednesday: bent leg holds

Friday: straight leg-to-N-holds

Week 2:

Monday: N-holds + straight leg-to-N-holds

Wednesday: straight leg holds

Friday: N-holds to L-hold

And if you’re more advanced and want to work on these daily, here’s an advanced program.

Advanced program:

Week 1:

Monday: (warm up: bent and straight leg holds) N-holds + N-hold-to-L-hold

Tuesday: (warm up: bent and straight leg holds) N-holds

Wednesday: (warm up: bent-to-straight leg holds) N-holds-to-L-hold + L-holds

Thursday: (warm up: bent-to-straight leg holds) N-holds

Friday: (warm up: bent-to-straight leg holds) L-hold-to-advanced L-hold

Week 2:

Monday: (warm up: straight leg holds) N-hold-to-L-hold

Tuesday: (warm up: straight leg holds) L-holds

Wednesday: (warm up: straight leg holds and N-holds) L-holds + L-holds-to-advanced L-holds

Thursday: (warm up: straight leg holds to N-holds) L-holds

Friday: (warm up: N-holds) Advanced L-holds

Congratulations! You have just kicked the L-hold’s ass! And now your abs are punch proof. But they’re not punch proof enough – not if you’re reading this anyway. For the average exerciser a full L-hold is a laudable accomplishment. But you’re not average, otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this. The time to go above and beyond is nigh. Stay tuned. The V-hold is calling your name. And it will soon be time to answer the call.

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About Aleks Salkin: Aleks Salkin is a calisthenics and kettlebell fanatic and Primal Move Fundamentals instructor currently headquartered out of Haifa, Israel. In addition to his love of old school strength training, he is also a devotee of intelligent flexibility training and tension flexibility in particular. Aleks grew up scrawny and unathletic until he was exposed to Pavel and his training methodologies in his early 20s. He currently spends his time spreading the word of strength and health both in person to his clients and online via his website and Facebook page. He is available for online coaching for select, dedicated individuals, and enjoys crushing weakness wherever it tries to hide. Find him online at http://www.alekssalkin.com/

Freaks and Geeks of Fitness

April 9, 2013 By Danny Kavadlo 23 Comments

We within the calisthenics community come from different backgrounds and origins, assorted borders and parts of the world. Yet here we are united for a common cause, a love of fitness and function, a passion for the improvement of self and the inspiration of others. In bodyweight training, we achieve with only the bare minimum.

Young and old, male and female, black and white: we are all represented. In fact, lots of us have never really fit in anywhere else, have we? I love it when outcasts come together. Diversity is a beautiful thing.

From urban bar athletes of New York, taking muscle-ups to new levels, to the teenagers in Europe flagging off the street signs, many with the affection for fitness have found a place to call home in calisthenics. So what if we didn’t throw the winning touchdown at the big high school game? We may have had different introductions to exercise, but we’re proud of who we are. And we train hard.

Coney Island, in deepest South Brooklyn, is the stomping ground of some of the illest calisthenics practitioners on the planet. Historically it was the home to strongmen, acrobats, and freaks of nature. Those guys were no joke. I can do a human flag, but I can’t bend nails!

One need look no further than the pull-up bars on the beach, the side show by the seashore, or the upcoming strongman contest, to see inhuman feats of strength still being performed to this day. Boardwalk history repeats itself as these modern marvels echo the death defying showmen of yesteryear.

They never fit in anywhere either.

C.I. is iconic; some would say magical. Even Coach Wade shows his love with a shout out to Joey Chestnut in his Convict Conditioning Ultimate Bodyweight Training Log. As the new season begins after a devastating year, I decided to include a clip that pays tribute to my favorite gym in the sand. Here’s some extreme bodyweight training, served up with a little extra mustard!

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About Danny Kavadlo: Danny Kavadlo, Master PCC, is a Personal Trainer in New York City. He’s worked with hundreds of clients, including athletes, models, and celebrities. He is featured in the Convict Conditioning Series & Raising the Bar, and is known globally as a motivator & leader in the calisthenics community. Learn more about Danny at: www.DannyTheTrainer.com.

My Path to the PCC

April 2, 2013 By Al Kavadlo 38 Comments

My first real job as a personal trainer was working for the Lakeshore Athletic Club in Downtown Chicago. Though I already had a couple independent clients, I was hired at the former Wabash St. location in the heart of Chicago’s business district (“The Loop” as it’s known to Chicagoans) as a “fitness floor manager” before working my way up to being part of the training staff.

Being a floor manager is a much less important job than it’s made to sound. My main duties were picking up towels, re-racking dumbbells and making sure people didn’t exceed the 30 minute cardio machine time limit during peak hours. After a few months of that (I’d already had my personal trainer certification for a while by this point), I was finally deemed ready to train clients – I’d hit the big time! I was excited but also very nervous. Being someone’s trainer is a big responsibility and I wanted to do a good job.

Chicago is pretty cold and I started working at Lakeshore during the winter, so when they hired me they only gave me long sleeve shirts. Nobody saw my tattoos, which I quickly decided was a good thing. I wanted to attract as many clients as possible and I thought my ink might freak people out. I didn’t have any tattoos on my hands and neck yet, so it was fairly easy to keep them all covered.

During my teens, a lot of people tried to make me feel foolish for getting my arms tattooed while I was so young. At the time, I didn’t give a damn what anyone thought, but by my twenties, I started to buy into the mindset that being tattooed might be a hinderance in my professional life.

In general, I was pretty insecure during my early adulthood. In fact, I was so unsure of myself when I began my career as a trainer that I remember being genuinely surprised the first couple of times I closed deals. I wondered if my time was really worth the money. Almost every new trainer questions themselves at some point and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think it shows that you really care.

Though it took some time to get the ball rolling, after a few months, I started to feel more comfortable and confident in my role as a personal trainer. Things were going great; I was spending lots of time in the gym getting to know everyone and I was beginning to learn the business. I started to pick up more clients and earn the respect of my fellow trainers. I was also learning a ton about working out!

Since it was so cold, it was no big deal to wear long sleeves every day. I probably would have wanted to anyway. Even in the summer, they always had the air conditioners pumping, so nobody thought much of it. The only time I ever had my tats exposed was for a quick second in the locker room, though I generally made it a point to try to avoid others while I was changing.

After I had been there for about a year, my training manager approached me one day and told me one of his clients said something to him about the trainer with all the tattoos. He was confused and told the client he didn’t have any tattooed trainers on staff. Eventually he figured out he’d never seen me in anything but long sleeves. The cat was out of the bag! He asked to see my arms and I sheepishly rolled up my sleeves. Then he told me he thought my tattoos were pretty cool and said I shouldn’t feel the need to keep them covered up.

What a relief it was to find out that nobody actually cared! In fact, a lot of folks at the gym really dug my ink. Like many people, I was afraid of being misunderstood, so I shielded my true self from the world. Funny enough, it was only after I embraced who I am that I started to really enjoy going to work and feeling comfortable in my role as a trainer – and a man.

Not only did I feel at ease wearing short sleeves after that conversation, I also began to feel more comfortable just being myself. I started having more fun with my clients by making jokes, telling stories and generally letting them get to know me more as a person. I came to find that this is a fundamental part of successful personal training.

When I moved back home to New York City and started working for New York Health and Racquet Club, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were lots of other heavily tattooed trainers working for that company. The guy who hired me at NYHRC had even more ink than I did. My newfound confidence allowed me to become fairly busy within my first several months there. Though New York is a much more competitive market than Chicago, I eventually stepped up my game and within a few years became not only the top trainer in my club, but eventually the top trainer in the company. In December of 2008, I set a NYHRC company record for gross personal training sales by a single trainer in a single month. I celebrated the occasion by getting the tattoo I have on my right hand index finger. Bang! I had truly arrived!

Though things were going great, I soon started to feel like there was no way for me to grow within the confines of a commercial gym. There was so much about the mainstream fitness scene that I wanted to get away from. The unrealistic expectations, the “miracle” breakthroughs, the so-called “quick fixes” – not to mention all the emphasis on machines! Plus there were also the usual frustrations of corporate bureaucracy to contend with.

Where I had once wanted to fit in, I now wanted to stand out. I decided that I needed to do things on my own terms. I had so many ideas that seemed in contrast to what everyone else was doing. I knew there had to be more people who felt like me.

That need to connect with like-minded people was the motivation to start my blog. Soon after that, I quit my job at NYHRC to focus full time on writing. Since I wasn’t making any money writing yet, I started training a few clients at the park and working part-time at a small, independent facility called Nimble Fitness. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I knew there was no way for me to grow without starting over.

I slowly began building a following online and a reputation in the neighborhood. I focused on writing as much as I could and getting my articles and pictures in other websites and magazines. After being rejected by countless book agents and publishers, I self-published my first book, We’re Working Out! – A Zen Approach to Everyday Fitness, in 2010. During the next year, I wrote almost a hundred articles and created nearly as many YouTube videos. I also managed to sell close to 1,000 copies of my book – a pretty big success by self-publishing standards.

One day I got an email from Paul “Coach” Wade telling me he’d read my book and loved it. What a huge compliment! I would have been quite content if he had stopped there, but of course, that was just the beginning.

My writing wasn’t the only thing that Coach Wade liked. He also liked my look – especially the tattoos. Then he told me about a new book he was working on. It was the sequel to a book called Convict Conditioning, which I had of course, heard a lot about. To my amazement, Coach wanted me and my brother Danny to appear in Convict Conditioning 2. Ironically, the tattoos that I was once concerned would limit my career opportunities wound up providing the exact opposite effect.

Appearing in Convict Conditioning 2 was the beginning of a whole new life for me. Over the next several months, I went from being a relatively unknown fitness blogger to one of the most recognizable faces in the calisthenics community. Instead of getting a few hundred views a day, my website soon began receiving thousands of daily visits. My YouTube views quickly climbed into the millions and I started getting a dozen or more Facebook friend requests every day.

In the last year and a half, I’ve published two of my own books with Dragon Door, Pushing The Limits! and Raising The Bar, as well as a DVD version of Raising The Bar. My audience continues to grow daily and I’m connecting with more people than I ever thought possible. But my favorite thing about working with Dragon Door is the freedom they’ve allowed me. I’m living my dream and I don’t have to compromise myself to do so.

When John Du Cane and Paul Wade asked me about leading the PCC program, I jumped at the opportunity. Though being a writer and blogger has opened doors for me, actually training people is still where my deepest passion lies. Books and DVD’s are great, but there is no substitute for an in-person experience. I am thrilled to be able to take the show on the road and train with you guys in the flesh.

We’re Working Out!